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Why worry about pleasing "God" and living your life to his standards instead of living for yourself and fulfilling your dreams and desires? I can't imagine living by someone else's rules and standards for a spot in an afterlife that i'm not even sure exists. I understand how strong faith can be, but why live by God's standards for a potential afterlife instead of living by your own standards now in the definite life you've been given.

As a Christian english geek, I am severely suspicious of your use of quotation marks. Because your entire question, in fact your entire world view, can be summed up by your usage of quotation marks in that question.

First up, do you know this “God” that you condemn to dubious ideology with your intellectually patronizing punctuation? Is “God” a lie or a fairytale to you? Is He a made-up story you tell kids, like Santa Claus or the Easter bunny?

Is He a vague, nebulous idea, filed away in your repertoire of knowledge, to pull off the shelf in time of crisis for some warm fuzzy feelings, like Love, Peace and Destiny? Because if you call Him “God”, it’s no wonder that you “can’t imagine living by someone else’s rules and standards for a spot in an afterlife that [you’re] not even sure exists.” Let me tell you about God. GOD cannot be contained to a cute little pair of quotation marks. GOD cannot be banished to history books and fairy-tales by academic snobs. He’s not just an idea made-up by people to control other people’s behavior. He’s not a historical figure in a book written thousands of years ago. He’s not a story or a religious figure or a symbol of the power in all of us, or a name for the forces of good and evil conflicting in the universe. And He’s not even just “someone else”. See, I don’t worry about pleasing “God”. I have the immense, undeserved blessing of knowing GOD:The architect of space and time. The composer of the stars’ song and the choreographer of the planets’ dance.The sovereign ruler of all that was and is and is to come. The infinite, almighty, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, transcendent orchestrator of the universe. He who wove strands of DNA into a person. He who breathes life into our bodies.He who supplies our very power of thought. He who commands the winds and waves to fall silent and they obey. He who can stop the earth spinning on its axis and start it again. He who said “Let there be light” and there was.Because He is light. He is life.He is love. Before you were, or I was, before Jacob was, before Isaac was, before Abraham was, God IS. He always was. Always is. Always will be.All of what we know exists in the mortal world sprang from His imagination.  So I know who He is. And I know that He loves me. Wait…what? He loves me? He loves me! He loves me!!!! I know that He loves me in a crazy, scandalous, outrageous, incomprehensible, all-consuming, unconditional, inclusive, tidal-wave kinda way. Not only that, but as one person out of 7 billion on a planet that is only one millionth the size of the sun. The sun is only a small star among billions of stars in the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. Okay, so just take a second to grasp the scope of how massive that universe must be. And then stop and try to grasp that the God who created that universe out of His head knows me and you personally. He knows the number of hairs that are on our heads. He pays very particular and very close attention to our lives and knows the intimate details of our hearts. He saw our unformed bodies before we were even a thought in our parents’ minds. He knit together our unformed bodies in our mothers’ wombs. He knew every single second of every single day of our whole entire lives before we were conceived. That’s how important and precious we are to Him. Okay, so not only do I know WHO He is, and HOW MUCH He loves me, I know what He DID. He died. He stepped out of heaven, out of paradise, out of light and love and perfection…into the dirt and dust and disgustingness of our world. Into the rape and the murder and the genocide and the abuse and the poverty and the injustice and the pain and the shame and the guilt and the ugliness and the wretchedness. Why? For all those reasons. For all the crap and the gunk. For all my mistakes. For every time I hurt someone I cared about. For every time I hurt myself. For every time someone else hurt me. For every single careless word we wish we could take back. For every sleepless night ending in shame and guilt and fear. For every panicked feeling of helplessness. For all the bitterness. For all the anger. For all the feelings of worthlessness. For “every daughter whose innocence was stolen by every son who couldn’t help himself” (Jason Gray). For all the fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins and friends who betrayed the trust of a young girl and left her despoiled, abandoned, feeling like garbage. For every affair that shattered a marriage into painful, jagged shards. For every child who was left on the streets because their parents died of AIDS, sniffing an oil-soaked rag to numb the hunger pangs in their stomach. For every child who was abducted in the middle of the night, had addictive opiates ground into cuts on their arms, handed a gun and told to shoot their mothers and brothers and sisters. For every child who was packed into a shipping crate and sent across the ocean like worthless cargo to a brothel where they were assigned a number and put on a menu for people to choose from for their perverse desires. For the thousands tortured and killed in the most inhumane ways by people who thought they superior beings. For every scar on my friend’s arm. For my friends porn addiction. For my friend’s eating disorder. For my pride and arrogance. For your broken heart. GOD, the architect of space and time, transcendent, perfect being, who need not even concern Himself with us, stepped right smack dab into the middle of our colossal mess. And He allowed us to mock Him, whip Him, put a crown of thorns on His head, nail Him to a tree, and let Him suffocate under His own body weight, when He grew too exhausted to lift Himself up to inhale. He could have commanded angels to rescue Him, but He didn’t. He suffered a humiliating, barbaric death and the complete human experience when God the Father turned His back on His son and dumped ALL our sin on His shoulders. So you know that huge list of terrible things I listed back there? That was ALL dumped on Jesus. He felt it ALL. Generations upon generations of pain and hatred and hurt and shame of all humans since the beginning of time and until the end of time stacked on top of each other. More psychological and emotional agony than you or I will experience in an entire lifetime, or even billions of lifetimes. All of it, on Him. Can you imagine the immensity of that soul-wracking Hell on earth? Nope. None of us can. By that point, Jesus was probably BEGGING for that physically-excruciating death. Whose fault is it? Who put Him there? We did. We didn’t mean to. We’re just trying our best. But we don’t really know what we’re doing and we screw up a lot. And we’ve messed up our world, so we can’t go to heaven when we die cause heaven’s perfect and we’re imperfect. But God is like “I know a way. It hurts and it’s terrible and awful and painful but it’s the only way to save these pitiful human creatures that we love so much for no reason other than that we created them.” And Jesus is like “whatever you say, I’ll do it. I love them. I love Katherine and Rebecca and Joshua and Anna and Daniel and Rachel and Kate and Laura and Jessica and Emily and Jonathan and Adam and….” …and all of them. Every person who every existed. Even for a second. Even if they didn’t make it past their mother’s womb. Even if they had no human name, all of our names are written on the palm of His hand. The same hands that took the nails. And so, instead of being bitter or blaming us on that cross, He remembered the names on His hands and He remembered what the nails were for. And He said “Father, forgive them, for they know now what they do.” THEN, not only that! But He went to Hell. Heck yeah, He went to Hell. This is like the Disney Hercules movie for goodness sake! He went to the Devil’s turf, his territory, his playground. And HE TOOK THE FREAKING KEY! He took the key to death. He went and trashed the place! He stole victory from the devil. He conquered life AND death. He broke every chain the devil ever had on us. Then He came back, and now we can live forever with Him in Heaven. My point is that if you’re still putting God in quotation marks, you DON’T understand “how strong faith can be” because you don’t even know what my faith is in. 

If you’re still putting God in quotation marks, you don’t know God. And now that I’ve tried to explain who He is and what He did, it has NOTHING TO DO with “[living] by God’s standards for a potential afterlife instead of living by [my] own standards now in the definite life [I’ve] been given.” I live a life of complete surrender and worship to the God who made me and saved my soul because it’s the ONLY LOGICAL COURSE OF ACTION. If you knew what I know, you would live your life the way I do too. Once I understand what He did for me, I can’t help but pour my whole entire life out as a living sacrifice of praise. Every breath I take, every move I make, every thought I think, every word I say, is only by the grace of God and I am aware of that. I’m just trying to give back all that I can for a debt that I can NEVER EVER repay. So yeah, that’s why I “worry” about pleasing “God”. Ha. Because He’s the only thing in the whole world that matters. Also, the bible says that what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18) so I would say that the afterlife is more definite than this one. If I accept that God is real, I accept that heaven is real, and I accept that He loves me and died for me. Therefore, worship is the natural, instinctive response of this wretched human heart responding to His love and grace. On a side note, from a purely human point of view, living by God’s standards sure as heck hurts myself and other people a lot less. It gives me a moral code that saves me from addiction and heartache. It makes me a kinder, more generous, more compassionate, more loving person. It gives me empathy and a passion for helping the less fortunate. It gives me hope and peace. And it has been scientifically proven to improve my health and extend my life. Why the heck wouldn’t you live life by these standards? They’re awesome! If everybody actually lived by these standards (instead of twisting them through their own corrupt worldview, ahem WBC…), this world would be a beautiful place, and not the terrible place it is today. Jus’ sayin’. ;) To wrap this up, if He was just “God”, I wouldn’t bother trying to please Him either. So I can’t really blame you for your question. But your misunderstanding comes from a place of ignorance. I hope you understand a little better what I believe now. He’s NOT just “God”. I know I may have sounded vicious in this post, but I’m not mad, just passionate. Always, Peace and love!-Katherine 

How do you feel about the scandals that revolved around the Christian brothers (sexual assault towards youth) in Newfoundland and other similar scandals? Things like this have caused many to loose confidence with their faith, what are your thoughts on that?

Hey baby! (Don’t be weirded out, I use a various terms of endearment with all my friends and acquaintances) 

And ugh. I have a bunch of different thoughts on this topic. I’ve heard soooo many different opinions on this. I’ve heard of churches going door to door to collect donations to bail priests out of jail, priests who were incarcerated for sexual assault on a minor. Now, the reliability of these reports is dubious, at best. I honestly cannot formulate an opinion on that idea, or its truth. Now, in my own church, we had a scandal a couple years back. One of the pastors at my church was convicted of sexual deviancy, the likes of which is apparently a crime. Man, I dunno what happened. It was kind of a mess, tbh. Obviously, he lost his job at my church and I’m pretty sure with the PAONL in general. I also think they told him he could be re-ordinated if he took counselling and stuff. 

First up. Obviously, pastors/priests/reverends/whatever are people just like the rest of us. They’re gonna screw up. That’s a-given. But when they screw up in such a way that it hurts other people, we absolutely must acknowledge it. We must acknowledge the damage done, and we must take steps to show that we acknowledge it and to attempt to rectify it. I am sorry, but child pornography, and sexually assaulting young boys, or whatever, that’s straight-up awful. And I would be in 100% agreement with the church if they fired the people who committed these crimes. Any other company would. We don’t have to pretend like we’re perfect. It’s no secret that we’re really not. To preach sexual purity and selflessness and love for others and a straight moral path and then to defend those who CLEARLY violate these teachings is hypocritical, it’s not grace. Hate the sin. Love the sinner. But really, really hate the sin. Don’t defend it. Don’t excuse it. Don’t justify it. Hate it. 

On the other side of that, grace is a part of this too. Churches are full of hypocrites. That’s why we’re there. We as Christians do not think we’re perfect, rather we are acutely aware of our imperfection. We strive everyday to become more Christlike but it is a battle against our very nature and by default is possible only by the grace of God. We absolutely must forgive and accept the people who commit these heinous crimes, because that’s what God does.

I know it’s really hard for us to wrap our brains around, but all sin is equal to God. Lying is the same as murdering. Envy is the same as rape. It sounds ludicrous to us, because human morals have a measurement of severity, based on the effects the transgressions have on the people around us. God’s only measurement is “perfect” or “not perfect” and any sin, no matter how awful, or how trivial, is in the “not perfect” category. Romans 3:23 says “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” …”fallen short of the glory of God”. That’s what sin is. It literally means not being divine. Well if that’s the definition, then heck yeah everybody has sinned! 

So my point in saying that is that we need to forgive even the worst of humans, because we are just like them. I listened to this talk by Judah Smith about how we hate Barrabbas so much, the guy the jews told Pontias Pilate to free instead of Jesus. He was a murderer and they let him go free instead of Jesus! Like what the heck? Oh wait a minute…he’s me. Jesus bought his freedom just like he bought mine. We are all the same. We sin the same and God loves us the same. 

HOWEVER. All our actions have consequences. Forgiving someone and extending grace to them does not always mean that they will be exempt from the consequences of their actions. Losing your job and going to jail may be the consequences of your actions. So be it. That’s only fair, as far as fair goes on earth. 

And finally, people are gonna let you down. They’re going to shock, dismay, disappoint and hurt you. We are an imperfect being, plagued by mortality. But don’t give up on God. He’s the only one who will not disappoint you. I know His church screws up. I know some of His so-called “followers” are batcrap crazy. I know He gets a bad rep cause people misuse His label and they say one thing but do another. I know, I know, I know. I heard a comedian put it this way: “I like Elvis but I don’t like all his crazy fans.” This is why I think it’s so important for the church to be very careful about their reaction to scandals like this so that we demonstrate that we acknowledge the pain and the damage, we do not condone the behaviour, we apologize for it while still being gracious. It’s a very tricky situation. But at the end of the day, everyone’s relationship with God is their own business and their own responsibility. No one’s gonna take the credit or the blame for your eternity. My advice is to look past the stupid manmade institution called Religion. [Sidenote: I am a strong advocate of the church. I love the church. I think serving and being a part of a body of believers who will edify you in your faith is awesome.] Because God cannot be contained by a building or a group of people or a list of rules or even an idea in your head. 

God is bigger and greater than anything we’ve ever known or ever will know. He is the first, the last, the everything. He is in all and through all and nothing can be apart from Him. So don’t diminish Him to the church. Find out for yourself who He is. Read the Bible, spend time in prayer, don’t rely on secondhand information. Be a critical thinker and find out about God yourself. And find a church that you think exemplifies biblical values well and that you feel is good for you at this point in your life. 

That’s all I have to say :P 

Thanks for the question! Peace and love!-Katherine 

Jesus is Loving Barrabas Interlude

GUYS. I know that I'm not the most social of tumblr-ers but I really really really wanna have a discussion about this! Will y'all come and chat with me?

So....this weekend I volunteered with this provincial conference called YC. It's an annual gathering of about 2000 Christian teenagers from across the island (the island of Newfoundland, population ~500, 000). We flew in bands like Switchfoot, Group 1 Crew, Unhindered and Bluetree, and some awesome speakers such as Preston Centuolo, Duffy Robbins and Eric Samuel Timm. ANYWAY, at this conference we always have workshops, and one of them was one "Sexuality in the 21st Century". 

So the guy who's giving it is a professor at a bible college and he's super super super smart and he was basically talking about homosexuality. I didn't get to go but a couple of my friends went. So what you're getting here is actually tertiary information, but I'll just post the major points. 

He believes that being gay is a biological predisposition. 

He believes that we all have a piece of "The Fall" in us. The fall includes diseases, addictions, character flaws, etc. So I guess in some cases, that piece of the fall is homosexuality. 

He says that you can be a Christian and be gay (okay, that might not be earth-shattering, but I think it's cool). 

HOWEVER, it's evident from the new testament that the bible does not condone homosexual behaviour. 

THEREFORE, in order to be Christian and homosexual, one must remain celibate, i.e. a "non-practicing homosexual". 

I know, that totally sucks and it's unfair. His rebuttal is, "what about the Christian life is fair? In the same breath, you could talk about Christians on the other side of the world being persecuted and murdered for their faith. What about that is fair?" 

He also personally knows a Christian couple who are gay and a lesbian and they were best friends and they got married so that they would be less tempted to have sex with someone of the same gender (I guess cause they don't want to have sex with anyone else cause they don't want to cheat on their spouse) and also because even though they're not really physically attracted to each other, if necessary, they can still get that physical release. 

I dunno. I'm just so incredibly fascinated with this topic! Like, I know what I believe about homosexual people outside of the church. That's basically a no-brainer. You love everybody, no matter what. Done. But I've never really thought about homosexual people inside the church. So I really wanna know what y'all think! PLEEEEEEEEEASE come talk to me!!!

Hate is not a productive response to hate. How are we to have genuine dialogue with someone when we're putting them on the defensive? How are we to overcome evil by stooping to the same level? How are we to correct ignorance by overshadowing the real issue with our ugly words? By hating those who hate us, we ensure that we will remain trapped in a cycle of hate. Just because you're hating in the opposite direction doesn't mean you're doing the opposite of hating. You're still hating. Two wrongs will never make a right. We must overcome hate with something stronger than hate. You know where I'm going with this, right? Love. Love will always conquer hate. Love is the most radical, scandalous answer to hate, because it is unnatural. Not unnatural. Supernatural. Jesus says to love those who hate you. When your love is big enough to swallow wave after wave of malice and vitriol, then you will be truly victorious. Then you will see people take notice. Then you will change the world.

That full thing about sex was deep. As a christian who has drifted away, I took more out of that than any devotion. Good work, Im not gonna stop - but I respect your decision.

WHAT! DUDE MAN BRO. (Okay, I know I just effectively destroyed any illusions of me being deep). But wow, thank you for taking the time to come tell me that. :) I appreciate that a lot, and your respect for my decision! The respect is reciprocated for yours. :) Mostly I'm just glad you actually took the time to read it and moreover, actually got something out of it. 

You're awesome and I love you. Thanks :)-Me 

Okay, so say you've met someone and you guys fell in love. You want to wait till marriage for sex. He isn't a virgin but is willing to wait. Would you still be with him? Why? Or why not?

When talking about that issue on its own, yeah I would still be with him. There are many factors affecting any relationship, but for me, one’s sexual history is not one of them. 

The main thing I look for in a potential husband is a deep and abiding love of Christ. I want someone who will always put God before me; someone who listens to the voice of the Holy Spirit before mine. Someone who knows how to love himself and love me because he understand how God loves us. So I will marry a devout and practising Christian. Probably a charismatic Christian because someone who’s not charismatic might get a teensy bit freaked out by the whole “speaking-in-tongues” thing. 

What happened before they met Jesus really doesn’t matter to me. Whether my future husband was raised in the church and maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he’s known Jesus for years or maybe right now he still hasn’t met Him. Maybe he did drugs and was involved in gangs and committed all sorts of crimes and slept with hundreds of women. Maybe he struggled with depression and low self-worth and faced cutting and suicidal thoughts and all sorts of awful stuff. 

I dunno. But I do know that when you meet Jesus, it’s now just that your life is changed…it’s literally like dying and being reborn as a new person. In church we call it being “born again”. Because God will take your old life and your old identity and give you a brand new one. He will open your eyes and your mind to His vast, unconditional love. Love that is stronger than life and death. Love that stole the keys to the gates of Hell so that you and God could be together for eternity. Love that is stronger than anything that’s happened to you in the past. Stronger than anything you’ve done. Stronger than habits you want to break. Stronger than your own self-deprecating thoughts. 

And God, being divinely and supremely perfect, is the only person in the entire existence of everything who could possibly judge you for your past mistakes. And He doesn’t. He tosses your past transgressions into a sea of forgetfulness and it might as well be as if they never even happened. So who am I to hold them against you? 

If this potential husband were a born again, orthodox, hardcore, practising Christian who is on fire for God and respects me and is willing to wait for marriage, the fact that He’s not a virgin means less than the number of freckles on his elbow. Thanks for the question! Peace and love! -Katherine 

I can’t understand how anyone can be against people asking to be treated with justice. I can’t understand how anyone can be against people being treated like human beings. I don’t understand why we are still having to protest for these basic rights.

Bottom line is that a horrible crime was committed in broad daylight and we cannot be OK with it being dismissed. Michael Brown is not by any means the only one, it is the one that tested us beyond what we are capable of ignoring. 

The Need for Missionaries in North America

Christians in North America love to talk about “missions”. Usually that means people on other continents, across oceans, with vastly different climates and cultures. We talk a lot about unchurched peoples. 

I think it’s time to talk less about unchurched peoples and talk more about DE-churched peoples.

In North America, we have a unique mission field. We live on a continent where millions of people already know about Jesus, and are vehemently disinterested in Him. Because of us. 

We are surrounded by millions of people who actively reject God because of us. 

They equate God with hate, judgment and condemnation because of us. Just one generation before mine in my province, people left the church in droves because of hypocrisy, scandal and intolerance. My generation is the first generation in Newfoundland in which many people have absolutely zero affiliation with any church. My generation is the generation that knows God as someone who hates women and people of colour and LGBTQ+ people. Because his followers hate all those people. 

Jesus said that people would know his followers by their love for one another, not their hate. 

Something has gone very very wrong here. The most well known image associated with Christianity in the United States is a sign saying “God Hates F*gs”. Half my time is spent trying to combat misogyny, homophobia and transphobia within the church and the other half of my time is spent apologizing for all those things to people outside the church.

Yes I assure you, I know that it’s “not all” churches and “not all” Christians. Before you whine about my generalizations, I will preemptively refute that critique by saying that every time someone claims “not all” about a social class in a position of power, the answer is that it is the vast majority enabling us to make general claims about clear trends evident in this social class. Furthermore,  in this specific case, even if it is not all, it is a portion that is statistically significant enough that it dominates the psyche of our culture. And those of us who have not been active perpetrators have been complicit through our defenses like the one that you’re leveraging against my stance right now. Okay, that’s out of the way.

I am in no way saying that we don’t have a responsibility to “Go” and make disciples of ALL the nations. I am in no way saying that the work that overseas missionaries do is not important or that God does not call people to international missions. Here is what I AM saying: 

if God does not call you--yes, YOU, specifically--and me to go overseas and preach the gospel, then the only logical conclusion is that he’s calling us to STAY and preach the gospel. 

Too often we think that if we are not being sent to a different country then we are excused from the Great Commission. We are not. 

We will each be responsible for all the people we came into contact with, all the people we were supposed to love like God, all the opportunities to be Jesus.

We need to recognize the vast population of dechurched people in North America. We need to understand the unique cultural challenges of doing ministry in this context. We need to intentionally address the very specific obstacles to the propagation of the gospel in North America. In some countries, the gospel faces opposition from animism. In some, from Buddhism. In others, from Islam. 

In North America, the gospel faces opposition from Christianity itself. 

Our job now is to undergo cultural sensitivity training for our own home missions field. Our job is to recognize that we don’t actually have home team advantage here. Christianity is not the default, dominant moral standard. And we don’t have any right to expect it to be. 

We’re fighting an uphill battle on a landscape that has already been ravaged by the war we’ve waged against the culture.

We have to meet people where they are. 

We need to respect the challenges, the baggage and the bondage in North America. 

The pain and fear and shame that the church has instilled in people so that they run away from God. If we really want to reach people for Jesus, we have to look around. We have to stop expecting people to come to us. We have to stop thinking that it’s easy for anybody to just walk into a church. For a lot of people, walking into a church is traumatic at worst and ironic at best. 

If we really believe in this earth-shattering, history-altering, life-changing, time-stopping, world-healing message we have the immense honour and responsibility to carry, then our job is to love.

That’s vague and trite and cliche. Allow me to elaborate. You know how overseas missionaries say that it’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle? Like that. You know how overseas missionaries intentionally create spaces where they can meet people exactly where they are and meet their needs in the best way possible? Like that. You know how overseas missionaries do not consider it their place to judge anybody, simply to demonstrate the love of Jesus? LIKE THAT. You know how overseas missionaries understand that they are guests of their region and are not entitled to a platform but instead have to work to EARN the trust of the people they minister to? LIKE THAT. You know how overseas missionaries spend months and even years carefully building connections in the community and relationships with individuals? LIKE THAT.

It’s not that I think that pastors and missionaries are the only ones in “full time ministry”. We’re all in full time ministry. 

If you consider yourself a Christian and you have a personal relationship with God and you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you’re AUTOMATICALLY in full time ministry. 

It’s like Step 1: Accept Jesus. Step 2: Tell EVERYBODY. Far be it from me to insinuate that missionaries are the only ones doing missions. I am claiming the opposite, in fact. I think that we all need to start thinking of ourselves as missionaries much more seriously than we do right now. 

Whether God has told you to go or to stay, you are where you are because He has placed you there for a purpose. 

I am advocating for a shift in attitude at a corporate level. I am advocating for a change in the way we as the Body conceptualizes outreach.

So what does this look like on a practical level? For one, it looks like acknowledging that we have occupied a position of social and political power for a long time and still do. It’s acknowledging the privilege inherent in living in a society where our religion has been the default for generations. It’s dismantling the myth that a white, straight man is God’s chosen one. It’s divorcing the church from the culture. It’s confronting the racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia within our communities. Yeah, I said it. It should be old news to you that I believe homophobia and transphobia to be theologically unsound and antithetical to the gospel. It’s letting go of our need to have our beliefs respected. Truly. Honestly. It’s accepting that we are not entitled to anybody’s time or ears. It’s working to build relationships, to be present in the community, to earn trust and establish credibility before we even think of asking people to engage with us on matters of life and death. It’s respecting the wounds our predecessors have inflicted on our siblings. It’s trying to be a part of the healing instead of claiming that the wound does not exist, or worse, causing even more pain. It’s putting an immediate halt to any kind of exclusion in our communities. 

What part of unconditional love do we not understand? How do we think we’re being salt and light by gatekeeping the gospel???

Whether we’re called to go or to stay, we’re all missionaries.

I'm super Impressed by the way you handle these questions! Personally while I love church and have been going since I was very little, I'm not overly religious. But I just love the way you handle questions that are like borderline, and right on the line of offensive to your beliefs. I also really like how while you answer them, you aren't forcing your own beliefs like I've have watched others do. I have always had a huge amount of respect for you, but it has grown since discovering your blog!!

Ahhhh Emily you're gonna make me cry! Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by and write that; it means so much to me. I'm really really glad that you told me that because my hope is to present an image of Christianity that is not judgmental or intolerant but rather real and accepting and loving. Your words are very encouraging, and hold great weight because you're an incredible person. You're loving and accepting and you know what you believe, which I respect so much. And your blog is beautiful :) I love seeing it on my dash every day. Lots of love, -Katherine